For motions and texts including an updated “template” following the Labour leadership’s tardy and muffled shift to backing a ceasefire, click here.

Based on a motion passed by Sheffield Heeley CLP in June 2023, but abbreviated to keep short (Islington North CLP, for example, has a 200-word limit on motions) and to allow room for updating in light of the votes on amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill.

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We believe:

Dealing with abortion within criminal law restricts and stigmatises both those who request an abortion and the healthcare professionals who provide that care.

• In addition, policy barriers to safe abortion include underfunded services, the requirement in legislation that approval must be given by other people or institutions, limits on when during pregnancy an abortion can take place.

• Social reasons for women delaying seeking services include lack of recognition of pregnancy, family or relationship breakdown, domestic violence, sexual assault or rape, or denial of pregnancy due to social fears. Later abortion disproportionately involves teenage or vulnerable women.

• Such barriers can lead to critical delays in accessing treatment and increase risk of unsafe abortion, stigmatisation, and health complications.

We further believe:

• Nobody should face prison for a decision about their own body and health care.

• Abortion should be considered as a healthcare procedure.

• Abortion should be available on demand as early as possible and as late as necessary.

We call on Labour to commit to:

Decriminalisation of abortion provision, as pledged in our 2019 manifesto.

This branch notes the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza and the increase in settler violence in the West Bank. This branch opposes the war and occupation and supports a political settlement based on equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, including an equal right to self-determination.

This branch further notes:

• The work of Standing Together (Naqef-Ma’an/Omdim be’Yachad), Israel’s grassroots Arab-Jewish social movement, which fights against war, occupation, and racism, and for social justice and equality.
• The establishment of the UK Friends of Standing Together network, aiming to promote and build support for Standing Together’s work in the UK.

This branch believes that social change within Israel itself is vital for winning lasting equality and justice in Israel/Palestine, and that we should directly support the work of those fighting for this.

This branch therefore resolves:

• To support the UK Friends of Standing Together network and invite a speaker from the network, and from Standing Together itself, to a future meeting
• To make a donation of [£] to Standing Together
• To circulate the UK Friends of Standing Together e-newsletter to members

The Tories are talking about tax cuts to be covered by projected huge social spending cuts in the coming years.

Here is a text being put in Islington South CLP which you might adaptg.

We note the talk of Jeremy Hunt announcing tax cuts in the forthcoming Budget, to try to regain votes for the Tories, and to be “paid for” by further sharp spending cuts projected for when the Tories are no longer in office.

We note further the comment from the Institute for Government that “current spending plans are a fantasy. The deterioration in performance that they imply – particularly in the criminal justice system and local government – would likely lead any government to rapidly abandon them”.

We call on the Labour Party leadership not to get caught in this trap, and honestly to advocate increased taxes on the rich and big business to enable the repair and improvement of public services”

Some of us have made submissions along the lines below at Momentum’s motions portal for its online convention on 10 March 2024 (click here to register for the convention).

Two “strategic priority” submissions are listed. The convention is not limited to deciding just two or three strategic priorities, and we trust others will make submissions for worker-led green conversion of economic life, and revival of Labour Party democracy, as priorities. We have submitted “reverse Brexit”, and housing, as priorities, because we want to be double-sure they get on the agenda. Brexit is a big issue for us, since we trace our roots to the Labour For a Socialist Europe movement; and housing was one of the foremost issues at 2022 and 2023 Labour conference winning many motions from CLPs and yet excluded from the conference floor because the priorities ballots were swung towards prioritising issues where composites would be blander and less controversial.

Campaigns

Title

Tax the rich to rebuild the NHS!

Summary

This would be a campaign to mobilise people in CLPs and affiliated unions for pressure on an incoming Labour government (and the Labour leadership in the run-up to the general election). The aim: get Labour to commit to, and carry through, higher taxes on the rich and big business to fund rebuilding the NHS.

It would involve joint work with groups like Keep Our NHS Public; motions to CLPs and to union conferences and to Labour conference 2024 (if held); lobbying MPs; Momentum efforts to mobilise for and organise contingents (with banners, placards, etc.) on pro-NHS demonstrations and NHS workers’ picket lines; social media output from Momentum to spread the message.

How contribute?

The first of Momentum’s stated aims is “to work for the election of a socialist Labour government”. Adequate health is a precondition for everything, and so the most minimal of minimal definitions of socialism must include social provision of healthcare for everyone. With escalated waiting lists, the NHS is falling short of that. With this campaign, Momentum can both politically educate, and by showing itself willing and able to mobilise resources for urgent political need, “grow our membership and the Party, by reaching out to convince people of our purpose”.

Strategic priorities

Title

Reversing Brexit

Summary

Brexit is by no means “done”. Full border controls on imports from the EU to the UK have been postponed to 31 October 2024, even if the Tories are still in office then and do not postpone further. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement of 2020 must be reviewed five years after its entry into force. The provisions for Northern Ireland are unstable. The Tories pose a standing threat of a bonfire of regulations derived from the EU.

Most Labour supporters want Brexit reversed. This would be a campaign to help them find a voice, both for specific measures (e.g. restore free movement between EU and UK, rejoin Single Market) and for the general aim of reversing Brexit. It would involve motions in CLPs and at conferences, Momentum mobilisation for and participation (with banners and placards) on “Rejoin EU” demonstrations, joint work with groups like Another Europe is Possible.

How contribute?

Momentum’s second stated principle is “internationalism and a movement that works cooperatively with its allies across the world for socialism and peace”. Our commitments include “support social struggles and movements and act as a bridge, channelling their demands into the Labour Party”. This campaign would contribute to restoring full rights to workers who migrate across Europe and to unifying struggles to “level up” workers’ rights and conditions across Europe.

Title

Good, affordable low-emissions housing for all

Summary

As the Labour Campaign for Council Housing states: a “large scale council housing programme… is critical for resolving the homelessness crisis”. This requires “end Right to Buy, as in Scotland and Wales, to stop the loss of stock”, an increase in funds “available for building or acquiring council housing”, and “funding Housing Revenue Accounts adequately to improve the quality of homes”. It would allow “an emergency programme for decarbonisation of all council homes”. Many CLPs submitted motions along such lines at Labour conferences 2022 and 2023, but saw housing pushed of the agenda. This campaign would involve working with LCCH and others to push housing up Labour agendas both nationally and locally, by educational work and by submitting motions, campaigning in priorities ballots, and lobbying MPs and councillors for support.

How contribute?

Momentum’s principles commit to “a democratic economy in which… key… services are owned and controlled by the public and local communities” and to recognising that “climate change is the biggest challenge of our times”. This campaign will help to “support social struggles and movements and act as a bridge, channelling their demands into the Labour Party” and to develop Momentum local groups active on housing issues locally.

Constitutional amendment

Delete existing 16.1-16.3.

Add a new 16.1, and renumber accordingly:

16.1. Momentum shall organise a biennial in-person Convention. Delegates to the Convention shall comprise:

(i) Any eligible Momentum member that registers to attend a minimum of one week before the Convention

(ii) Delegates from affiliated trade unions.

The Convention shall have the power to debate and decide on policy and campaign and strategic priorities for the organisation; and to debate and vote on constitutional amendments which, subject to the conditions of Rules 16.5 and 16.6, will then go to a ballot of all Momentum members for approval or rejection as laid out in Rule 11.5 (ii).

Explication

What is Momentum’s policy? Who decides it? Every single organisation in the labour movement – every union, most factions and the party itself – has a regular conference, usually annual, and there is a reason for this.

Labour Left Internationalists organised a socialist round-table Zoom meeting on 28 January 2024. Speakers are identified only by initials (the Ds are not all the same person!)

J from Keep our NHS Public:

KoNHSP has about 50 active local groups – all in England, as it happens. They have local autonomy in their campaign priorities. For example, in Leeds the chief campaign is around a new private hospital.

KoNHSP works with Health Campaigns Together and SOS NHS, which has the backing of all the major unions.

KoNHSP is very disappointed with current Labour policy. That has four big ideas: better care in the community, new tech, increasing measures to prevent illness, using the private sector.

The hopes from new tech as the same as in 2014, except that the 2014 review recommended new spending to make those hopes happen. KoNHSP objects to using the private sector. The private sector is parasitical on the NHS. Using it will drain consultant capacity out of the NHS and increase private sector prices.

Otherwise, it’s just the magic efficiency tree and the reform fairy.

KoNHSP campaigns for a people’s vision of the NHS – more funding, but not just that. A publicly-provided NHS. Well-funded. With good pay for staff. Enhanced public health provision. Rebuild the NHS. KoNHSP is producing a booklet and 14 factsheets.

C from the Labour Campaign for Council Housing

LCCH is relatively small compared to KoNHSP. We have a housing crisis because of the failure of successive governments. Homelessness and housing waiting lists are increasing, despite a little new council housing being built in recent years.

LCCH sees its aims as not very radical, but important. We are soliciting grassroots views. Also addressing the problem councils have with temporary housing.

The efforts in successive conference priorities ballots to keep housing off the agenda suggest that the leadership feels challenged. Unison has a good housing manifesto. Many housing charities have similar policies.

LCCH produced an open letter, “stop the sell-off” (of council housing) – decided to put it like that, rather than using the words “stop right to buy”.

We need hundreds of thousands of new homes, not just a bare increase in the number of council homes.

D from Free Our Unions

Free Our Unions was launched by Lambeth Unison, and is supported by the FBU and RMT. It is for the repeal of all anti-union laws, not just the Minimum Service Law, and a positive right to strike. It campaigns for rank and file organisation for defiance of the Minimum Service Law, and a national demonstration in London against the law. It calls for unions to refuse to comply with the MSL and take action to defend workers penalised for refusing to strike-break.

Free Our Unions had success on policy in the Corbyn period, but obviously it is more difficult in the Labour Party now.

FOU has a meeting with Matt Wrack on the next steps on 15 Feb.

It is circulating a model motion initiated by a CWU branch.

D from Labour Campaign for Free Movement

LCFM works in the Labour Party and the trade unions. At Labour conference 2023 LCFM was defeated in the priorities ballot, though it did run what was effectively an LCFM session at The World Transformed. The Labour leadership is even worse than it was before on ignoring the membership. LCFM has been set back, and needs to rebuild capacity.

CY from Workers Against the Chinese Communist Party

WAC was set up in June 2023, bringing together Uyghur solidarity groups, Hong Kong solidarity groups, Chinese student groups, and others.

Chinese students in the UK have long been wary of activity because of the work of CCP agents here monitoring them, but since the White Paper movement more have become active.

WAC recently organised a protest about the trial of the HK47, who include the secretary of the HK Confederation of Trade Unions. The HKCTU has been shut down by Beijing pressure, and so now the only “trade unions” in HK are the HK Federation of Trade Unions, run by the Chinese state.

WAC is planning demonstrations for workers’ rights at Apple, which makes the bulk of its products in China, including by Uyghur forced labour.

WAC has not yet developed a definite tactic in the Labour Party, though it is seeking support from and speaker invitations to trade union branches.

Workers in HK face a double yoke of the new National Security Law and British colonial legislation, now being harshly interpreted.

M from Labour Left Internationalists

LLI is a renaming of Momentum Internationalists, which in turn grew out of Labour for a Socialist Europe, the main Labour left anti-Brexit campaign in the Corbyn period. We recognise that we are now on the back foot in the Labour Party, and realistically that will continue to the general election and probably for a period after that.

But there is still room to organise. The limiting constraint for now is not lack of such room but the willingness of left activists to stick in there and push issues. Successes in CLPs with motions on Gaza and on “no work notices” show that. We push motions, organise a profile at Labour conferences, etc.

If Labour wins government, clashes between the leadership and the ranks are likely before too long, on issues like the NHS and green investment. There may in fact be more fiscal “room for manoeuvre” than the leadership, anxious to damp expectations, admits, but there is no doubt that a refusal to raise taxes on the rich mean continuing rundown of public services.

For now the unions seem to be in election mode, damping down their differences with the leadership. That could continue for a while after a Labour victory in the election, too. LLI campaigns with Free Our Unions for clear and sharp commitments on such things as anti-union laws.

LLI also takes up Brexit. Brexit is far from a “done deal”. And a majority of Labour voters are for rejoining the EU.

D spoke about UK Friends of Standing Together (not as an official representative of the group, just as an individual activist in it telling us about what it is doing.

UK FOST is a network of UK supporters of Standing Together, an Arab-Jewish movement in Israel for peace, equal rights, and democracy. UK FOST has been incubating for some time, but had its public launch in December 2023. It hopes to construct links between Standing Together and groups in the UK; and it now plans to develop local UK FOST groups, following asp successful experiment with one in Nottingham.

D spoke about Another Europe is Possible, again not as an official representative of the group but as an individual participant in it.

AEIP now has three axes – against Brexit, for refugee rights, against Islamophobia. We didn’t get a clear reverse-Brexit motion through the priorities ballot at Labour conference 2023, and Labour Movement for Europe had put only very weak motions. At least the GMB is now for rejoining the Single Market. But the Trade and Cooperation Agreement will be a day one issue for an incoming Labour government. The TCA of 2020 has a sunset clause requiring review after five years. And meanwhile the EU is looking at internal reform, possibly internal reform which will make the UK rejoining easier.

Euro-elections are coming up in June 2024. EU citizens in the UK can vote in those elections, though sometimes with great difficulty.

New elections are coming up for the AEIP National Committee.

Points raised in discussions

• Nottingham City Council has issued a section 114 notice, setting it on the road to lots more cuts. A campaign against those cuts is underway. There are some hundreds of people involved in campaigns like that, across the city, but we need to have thousands. It’s the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike this year. In those 40 years Nottinghamshire outside the city has gone Tory.

• Devolution may have an impact, with some Labour mayors having very public differences with Starmer.

• What about the Brown Commission report? https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/labours-constitutional-proposals It calls for abolition of the House of Lords and a second chamber, regionally-based.

• Eton College has sponsored three free-school sixth forms in Oldham, Teesside, and Dudley. Oldham council (though not the councils in Teesside and Dudley) has applauded this. But the CLP and the Local Government Committee are clearly against. The CLP and LGC have adopted “no work notice” policies, and it looks like the council will follow. At the North West regional conference a motion rejecting public ownership of water was voted down.

• There is no magic way to go from hundreds of campaigners to thousands. The time will come. To be able to seize the opportunities when they arise, we have to stick at it now.

• Where left-wingers find it difficult to get motions to CLP General Meetings, maybe because of quorum issues in branches, it can be good to set up a local branch of the Socialist Health Association or the Socialist Education Association. It can serve the dual purpose of an informal left caucus and a channel for motions to the GM. The left in Islington North in the O’Halloran years used a local branch of the Fabian Society for that purpose.

• Getting invites to CLPs from KoNHSP, LCCH, UK FOST, etc. can be a useful way of raising issues.

Labour Left Internationalists is hosting a socialist round-table Zoom meeting on Sunday 28 January, 8pm, Zoomlink http://bit.ly/lpc-z or https://zoom.us/j/779445881?pwd=eFFNWHBOdjNpYlJiSnZGSG9yMURnUT09

Speakers are expected from at least:

Free Our Unions

India Labour Solidarity

Keep Our NHS Public

Labour Campaign for Council Housing

Labour Campaign for Free Movement

Workers Against CCP Repression

and we hope that some activists from UK Friends of Standing Together will attend and be able, unofficially at least, to tell us about their plans.

The purpose of the meeting is to compare notes and explore possibilities of mutual aid in the run-up to the general election and a possible new Labour government.

The text below is based on a motion going to Islington South CLP on 24 Jan 2024. Islington council has already passed a long general statement about non-cooperation with the Minimum Service Law. The text will serve also where councils have made no statement yet.

“We call on the Labour group to propose that the council specifically declare, as the Scottish government has done, that it will not issue ‘work notices’ under the Minimum Service Law. The law says only that employers may issue ‘work notices’, not that they must. The TUC 9 December special congress called for a campaign for commitments to refuse to issue ‘work notices’.”